Cave game tech test

This page documents an unreleased version.

 

While there is proof of this version's existence, it was never released to the public.

Cave Game

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Cave game tech test ^[1] or Cave Game tech demo^[2] is the earliest publicized unreleased version of what would become Minecraft. It was made on May 13, 2009, between roughly 16:48^[3] and 16:55 UTC.^[4] A video of the game at this time was recorded by Notch sometime between 17:00 and 17:14 UTC, and uploaded at 17:36 on May 13.^[5] It is the earliest known version of Minecraft, or what was then known as Cave Game, to have been recorded.

Development of the game started around May 10^[6] or 11^[7] to May 12 at the latest,^[8] and continued up to May 13, 2009, adding the features that would be later seen in the Cave game tech test video.

Cave game tech test block and item additions

Air

• Not listed as a block at this time.

Grass

• Made with the same graphics from Notch's game RubyDung.
• Grass appears on fully lit tiles on the top 7 layers of the map.
• Had the same texture on all sides of the block.

Rock

• Made with the same graphics from Notch's game RubyDung.
• Its texture at this time would later be repurposed for cobblestone.
• Rock would later be renamed to stone.

Player

• Currently has no model.
• Has a hitbox size of 0.6 blocks wide and 1.8 blocks tall
• Has an eye height of 1.62 blocks.
• Cannot perform any actions other than moving.

Caves

• Pass from the uppermost layer of the grass block to the penultimate layer of stone.

Chunks

• Takes about 0.1 seconds to generate.^[9]
• The size of each chunk is 16×16 blocks.^[10]
  • Chunks are 16×16 blocks instead of 8×8 because 8×8 chunks decreased performance.^[4]
• Chunks are loaded in order of their proximity to the player.^[11]
• The player spawns in a 256×64×256 tile map.
  • The game takes 20 seconds to generate a 256×64×256 map.^[12]
• It was possible to fall out of the world, but it would not kill the player.

Controls

• WASD key use for movement.
• Space key for jumping.
• Moving the mouse moves the camera.
• Can’t break or place blocks.
• Holding down R causes the player to respawn in a random X and Z coordinate at Y=74 every game tick (which is 1/60th of a second long prior to rd-20090515) until the key is released.
  • If the player falls into the void, they fall indefinitely until they press R.

Light

• The lighting engine in Classic and pre-Classic was simple, with only 2 light levels, bright and dark.
  • "Sunlight" is emitted by the top edge of the map and hits any block that is under it, regardless of distance. It passes through transparent blocks to light blocks underneath.
  • Blocks that do not receive light are in a dim shadow that remains at the same level of brightness no matter how far they are from a light source.
  • Blocks which are darkened also have a layer of thick, black fog applied to them, appearing darker when looked at from further distances. This caused weird visual quirks.

Sky

• The color of the sky is
   #7FCCFF.

Original

Archive

• 
  A cave
• 
  The chunks were loaded slow in this version
• 
  The bottom stone layers in this version
• 
  The ground in this version
• 
  A pit, with a contrast of light and dark on the left and right to illustrate the simplicity of the lighting engine in this version

• "lwjgl IRC logs" (archived) – Echelog, May 13, 2009 (UTC+2).
• Rotab's IRC logs on Archive.org; #minecraft.20090525.log. May 25, 2009 (UTC+2)

This was a featured article from May 18, 2026 – May 24, 2026.

 

See Minecraft Wiki:Featured articles for more information.